Bad Customer Service Bites Everyone Back

"It's not my fault. He started it!"

Just about any parent—or anyone young enough to remember their own childhood—has heard that tried-and-untrue excuse. It essentially boils down to: "Don't pay attention to that thing I just got (deservedly) caught for when you should be punishing so-and-so for their screw up instead!"

As most of us (hopefully) learn: Both offending parties wind up getting consequences in the end.

How many airlines are now feeling a backlash from United's spate of debacles that have filled the headlines for nearly two months?

Where the first story was a harbinger, the second became an industry-wide watershed, and not just because it greased the wheels for Congressional inquiry into the questionable practice of overbooking. Ever since the Dao Incident, the media and public's spotlight has been on airlines.

I could go on and on, yet many of these stories wouldn't have made it anywhere near the front lines of countless sites, channels, blogs, papers, etc. without United's supreme gaffe going first.

That's not to downplay the incidents or various victims in any of the above. I'm glad their stories are being heard, that public consciousness is on their side (for a time) and that the airline industry is hopefully more "sensitive" to rectifying plights than it would have been a couple months ago.

In fact, many of these incidents happened before United's but are just now coming to light as the insatiable media cycle (and more than a few lawyers) search under every nook and cranny for untold tales of traveler woe. Everyone is waiting for the next flight attendant to look at them wrong so they can catch it on their smartphone.

They're all striking while the iron is hot before public outcry shifts its gaze to something else.

That's because some other large business (or entire industry) won't learn its lesson from this. It will continue carrying on with a tone-deaf, arrogant ear to customer service, common sense problem-solving, employee relations and management, or all of the above. It will feel safe in its layer of lawyers and lawsuit slush funds that are ready to insulate against actual responsibility and ethics.

It will have a moment where a customer is severely wronged, and everyone will initially point the finger at everyone else so as to overlook the root problem: That these big issues began with a bunch of small ones which went ignored or downplayed until too many people became too jaded, lazy or fearful to care about fixing them anymore.

(Personal Anecdote: I frequently used to fly a United connection from South Bend, Indiana to Chicago's O'Hare during the past few years. These flights were late both ways every time. It quickly became clear that United didn't care.)

When United got caught, it briefly opened the door for Delta, American and many others to throw stones before their own glass houses began to chip. The last month has unleashed a torrent of echo stories, public outcry, legislative action, lawsuits (some shady in their timing; others not) and further reputation damage to an industry already struggling to rebuild it.

It's opened the industry up to the specter of more government oversight; something the airlines definitely didn't want and the sometimes inflexibility of which doesn't always benefit the consumer in the long run.

Not being able to overbook flights—or having to compensate more for them—is also likely going to cost the airlines many millions of dollars in lost revenue. Who do you think those costs get passed down to?

When I used to teach high school, I'd often begin the school year with a plea to my students: "I don't like enforcing rules or creating them any more than you like having to follow them. Let's all figure out ways not to do dumb stuff so that we don't create the need for more rules."

That good likely wouldn't have occurred without all this bad preceding it, though it didn't have to be this way.

The real test comes at the personal level within large companies that likely became that big by once-upon-a-time giving a larger share of a damn about their customers' experiences.

The buck may stop with the CEO, but it starts at the ground level and permeates all tiers of management.

A systemic failure of the kind we've recently seen shows that empowerment, compassion and practicality were long overshadowed by apathy masked with formality. It's been all press release sentimentality that fades before the ink even dries.

It's an industry-wide attitude problem that needs to shift—one that's likely been as much of a bummer for all the already responsible, kind, wonderful folks who work for United and the other airlines as it has been for any passenger.

The hurricane of bad news is going to pass in time as people get bored with it.

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Joel Cordes is Managing Editor for TravelPulse. An avid road-tripper, basketball fan and history buff, he is also a former teacher, sportswriter and broadcaster. Joel joined Travel Pulse in 2017 after more than seven years as an editor and writer coach for Bleacher Report. He lives in Michigan with his wife and three sons while mentoring the Travel Pulse writing staff. He'll take mountains over the beach any day.